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lobelia321Oh dear, am spiralling down again.
I might have suspected, what with the acerbic posts about timed wanking over the last few days, and then this morning the weepy melancholy about t'younger son's birthday. Also, the procrastinatory activity of sink shining taken to obsessive proportions.
Well, at least I have got better at spotting the signs somewhat earlier than I used to be. I'm now trying to stave off the depths, or at least be prepared to move through them quickly. It's that sudden hopeless feeling, despite the sun shining on the tops of the foliage outside my eyrie window and a blustery wind making the shadows dance.
I think I am the sort of person who needs deadlines. So maybe the most profitable step at the moment would not be writing the book but getting a contract which means having a deadline. It doesn't even have to be with a febulous publisher. What use is a febulous publisher if you have no book? Better to have a book, full stop. So I'm going to time myself (on my new digital timer) for 15 minutes, writing just any old thing on my conference paper (which does have a deadline, after all, and is due in Atlanta mid-February and has Not Been Written), and then I'm going to spend another 20-30 minutes looking at past book proposals I've written and sent, including the one Yale rejected and what they said, and my scribbled revisions of that proposal. And I'm going to see if I can fix that up with minimum heartache and just send it to my present publisher and be done with it. Then, if they also reject it, I can move on to the next publisher down the line.
Okay, but even thinking that far ahead is making my lungs feel oppressed. So I'm just going to think 15 minutes paper and 15 minutes looking at past proposals.
*takes deep breath*
*wonders if this post should be friends locked; has collected so many unknown readers of late*
*decides not to bother for now but to 'monitor the situation', as they say*
*decides also that locking-or-not-locking paranoia is possibly a sign of the big black dog*
I might have suspected, what with the acerbic posts about timed wanking over the last few days, and then this morning the weepy melancholy about t'younger son's birthday. Also, the procrastinatory activity of sink shining taken to obsessive proportions.
Well, at least I have got better at spotting the signs somewhat earlier than I used to be. I'm now trying to stave off the depths, or at least be prepared to move through them quickly. It's that sudden hopeless feeling, despite the sun shining on the tops of the foliage outside my eyrie window and a blustery wind making the shadows dance.
I think I am the sort of person who needs deadlines. So maybe the most profitable step at the moment would not be writing the book but getting a contract which means having a deadline. It doesn't even have to be with a febulous publisher. What use is a febulous publisher if you have no book? Better to have a book, full stop. So I'm going to time myself (on my new digital timer) for 15 minutes, writing just any old thing on my conference paper (which does have a deadline, after all, and is due in Atlanta mid-February and has Not Been Written), and then I'm going to spend another 20-30 minutes looking at past book proposals I've written and sent, including the one Yale rejected and what they said, and my scribbled revisions of that proposal. And I'm going to see if I can fix that up with minimum heartache and just send it to my present publisher and be done with it. Then, if they also reject it, I can move on to the next publisher down the line.
Okay, but even thinking that far ahead is making my lungs feel oppressed. So I'm just going to think 15 minutes paper and 15 minutes looking at past proposals.
*takes deep breath*
*wonders if this post should be friends locked; has collected so many unknown readers of late*
*decides not to bother for now but to 'monitor the situation', as they say*
*decides also that locking-or-not-locking paranoia is possibly a sign of the big black dog*
